“You might get your ass kicked”: the club Miles Davis called a proving ground for great musicians
Miles Davis could play God. To some, that might have seemed like a bold exertion of his power or an overreach of his influence, but to many others, his words were a free pass to spiritual guidance.
While every song he made was a religious experience and every note he played was like a piece of scripture, Davis himself didn’t always feel this way. Indeed, it was clear that he felt success was determined by a lap of the gods and not by him as a mere mortal, despite how people would crown him in glory.
The process of being inducted into the halls of musical royalty didn’t take place in some decadent palace or heavenly land, however. Instead, it took place in a club on a street corner in Harlem, New York – a breeding ground for all sorts of life and death, but also where the good and the great of the sonic world could be separated into their factions.
That place was the club Minton’s, located at 210 West 118th Street, whose audiences were as inimitable as the talent who would stand up in front of them. Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie were among just a few of the seismic names who were pivotal to its foundations back in the early 1940s, but it went on to leave a legacy of so much more.
During this era, the presence of Parker and Gillespie in particular, dubbed Bird and Dizzy, was entirely unmistakable. They were effectively the resident musicians who would commandeer the club every Monday night, and everyone else would watch and learn. Davis, then a new kid on the block, had a lot to take in.
He later recalled, “The way [it] went down up at Minton’s was you brought your horn and hoped that Bird and Dizzy would invite you to play with them up on stage. And when this happened, you better not blow it… People would watch for clues from Bird and Dizzy, and if they smiled when you finished playing, then that meant your playing was good.”
In this sense, you didn’t want to know what that ravenous environment would turn into if things hadn’t gone so well. “If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked,” Davis equally stated.
Minton’s, in this regard, was not the place to go if you’d only just picked up a horn for the first time the day before. Sure, it was basically a classroom for the students of jazz and bebop to learn from the professors, but there was still an essential part of the lessons that would take place where the pupils were expected to showcase the progress of their work.
There was a very good reason why this was the place where Davis, Monk, Parker, Gillespie and all the rest were lauded among the gods. Yes, it was partly an exclusive club of their own creation, but that was because they knew what they were cultivating was only for the very best of the best. Anything less would see you flying out the door.
